I started a new writing class, or I should call it writing clash. The teacher irritated me the moment he all-knowingly explained that billionaires have to be insane since they should have retired by the time they made 500 million. I rolled my eyes and muttered, “Oh great, my teacher is a lazy communist.”
When he gave me notes on a script, he explained a friend told him the difference between a man who is a pedophile and a man who likes young women depends on when the girl goes through puberty. I felt like throwing the barf face emoji in the group chat. The teacher finished up the anecdote by saying, “If anyone needs to make this distinction, it’s not a good sign.” And I was thinking, “Then why did you just say all that shit?”
What struck me as cosmic orchestration was that the next day, after I vented to everyone I knew about my teacher, a student in my class had a similar reaction to me. I was writing on the board and someone raised their hand and rudely said I was going to fast. I noticed they were on their phone so I said, it helps if you put your phone away, and they stuffed all their shit in their backpack and stormed out of class.
It was awkward and I’ve never experienced a student having a bit of a stamping-their-foot moment in class before. I choose to ignore it, but only externally. In my brain, I was processing like mad. I was like my teacher was to me, to this student. Did she think I was an out-of-touch pedo-symathizer?
That night Netflix infiltrated my dreams. I dreamed I was on the show Love Is Blind and I followed another contestant who was drunk off her ass and distraught that her apartment was haunted by ghosts. When I walked into her room, the ghosts turned out to be other contestants dressed up in powdered wigs pretending to be ghosts. I jokingly threw up two middle fingers and said, “Hey sluts, suck on this.” Then someone said something like “finger-bang fingers,” and I replied, “These are butt-banging fingers.”
I woke up laughing but concerned. I need to find someone to have sex with before my brain caves in on itself. Most people get out of a relationship armed with evidence their ex-partner is a narcissist, but I get out of relationships even more convinced I am a narcissist. How can I still think you can have a purely sexual relationship with someone? I can’t explain this to my family because they don’t understand my situation. They’ll be appalled, maybe disgusted, when I announce, “I’ve decided to take on a lover.”
I started watching Feud: Capote vs. The Swans on Hulu, and the swans have given me the perspective that “Gurl, you better get yours!” They’re like Carrie, Samantha, and that’s it. Charlotte is too prudish and Miranda is not glamorous. In the last episode, it was disclosed that the fabulous Babe would have suitors drop in, and she’d dazzle them with her fashionable outfit before giving them an average roll in the sheets. She didn’t hold these guys to the same standards as her TV mogul husband, she liked a handsome food delivery man.
I could take a hint from the Swans, and ask the pizza delivery guy, but what if he became obsessed with me? It just seems unsafe. My narcissism, rearing its beautiful head.
I’m too old for Love is Blind, and too young for the Golden Bachelor, but reality TV wouldn’t serve me well. I'm an introvert who loves controlled attention, and I don’t drink which is the main ingredient to these storylines.
If I did drink, I liken myself to Leah McSweeny from RHONY. I would annoy the shit out of everyone by being an obnoxious loudmouth after two glasses of wine but ultimately endear everyone with social schadenfreude after ending the night doing cartwheels naked across the lawn and launching tiki torches into the swimming pool like an Olympic javelin thrower.
I’ll just have to find this lover the old-fashioned way, praying to God that a man falls in my lap with his dick out and my pants off. There could be a small conversation. Maybe something sophisticated like, “Leave the pizza in the dining room, darling.” I will be cordial, not overtly nice, and I won’t be funny.
Next week, I’m going to class with a rewrite and I know my teacher won’t get it. I have my classmates though who I can glean an accurate reading of understanding and connection to the culture. I’m not getting caught up in the dramatics of my feelings because it could cause some type of mirrored disaster in my own classroom.
The moral of the story, emotions are for peasants, pizza is for sex, and sex saves lives.
